“All one’s life is a music if one touches the notes rightly and in time” John Ruskin, The Ethics of Dust.

On a restorative trip to Windermere, Lake District, Cumbria we paid a visit to the humble yet handsome Brantwood, home of John Ruskin for the last 28 years of his life. I stood in Ruskin’s turret, an addition to the South West Corner of the house. The turret is simultaneously built into his bedroom and out into the landscape, overlooking Coniston Water. Autumn was ablaze, the pinnacles of the snow powdered peaks, beautifully treacherous, were reflected in the calm steel grey of Coniston Water.  This strange quixotic space, a kind of architectural ecstasis, symbolises Ruskin’s ideal of the individual stepping forth encompassing one’s responsibility to oneself and to society. It is a liminal space, a threshold space, a space of transition between the enclosure and perceived comfort of the home and exposure to what lies beyond. The architecture and containment of the turret only served to heighten this sensation of struggle, physically and symbolically taking root in my imagination. I experienced something akin to “an intimate immensity”, Bachelard’s term for our imaginative capacity to inhabit a landscape internally.

“to stay what is fleeting, and to enlighten what is incomprehensible, to incorporate the things that have no measure, and immortalise the things that have no duration.” Bachelard.G The Poetics of Space

Ruskin had not lain in his bedroom for many years, a Fuselli like nightmare caused him to flee and never return. He said “One of the most provoking and disagreeable of the spectres was developed out of the firelight on my mahogany bedpost: and my fate, for all futurity, seemed continually to turn on the humour of dark personages who were materially nothing but the stains of damp on the ceiling.”(From a letter to Thomas Carlyle 23^rd July 1878, Brantwood Quotations.)

Inhabiting this dichotomous space, the now public life of the once private interior, I performed a private ceremony in public, a simple gesture without fanfare – I laid my hand gently on Ruskin’s pillow seeking a resonance, a communion, whilst contemplating [….] how his prolific and nimble mind had been reduced to dust and silence after a lifetime of mental toil. His work had become his tomb. His ruined mind turned to the labour of the hand, the hand to the labour of the land, to heart and home.

It was there in the photo album on display in the adjoining room it was discovered that Ruskin’s much loved boat, painted in an electric blue, was named after the epic poem Marmion by Sir Walter Scott. Indeed since discovering Scott he has arrived unbidden at every turn, like an unwelcome visitor, that flibbertigibbet of a man! I imagined Ruskin holding court in one of his Salon’s whilst reciting Scott’s poetry which I understand he did frequently. Although it is noted by Ruskin that Scott’s house rebuilt in the Scottish baronial style is an ‘incongruous pile.”

When I spoke to Howard Hull, Director of Brantwood, and recounted my experience of the place and the connection between Ruskin, intimacy, and the performance of the private it struck a chord with him. We discussed various things including the idea of a project entitled Letters to the Landscape, which also struck a chord and we digressed into a discussion about the talismanic memory of objects, magical properties mythologised over time. Some of Ruskin’s belongings were distributed locally to the descendant’s of Ruskin’s circle but are now eventually finding their way home as the benefactors memory becomes severed through time from those who inherited them. Howard recounted an anecdote about the apparent discovery of Ruskin’s bookcases found “buried under 50 years of sawdust.” I laughed as it seemed to contain an unsettling portent as Howard said “The village undertaker tapped me on the shoulder from behind.” This immediately recalled another haunting encounter with a vanished object that had taken root in my consciousness, grabbing me with stony fingers, extending out of the gloom of history, as if to take possession…

Images reproduced from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9e279c0e-5485-d9e0-e040-e00a18067520 (accessed 07/03/22)

“Coventry lies at the heart of England, and in the medieval period was at the centre of national power, hosting Parliament and courts, and serving as the national capital at times during the Wars of the Roses. Its rich surviving heritage has often been over-looked and underused since the wartime destruction of 1940.”

The Carthusian Priory of St Anne- is a unique Grade 1 listed building and grounds, surrounded by parkland in the centre of Coventry. Charterhouse is a grade I listed 14th Century Carthusian Monastery, one of only nine ever built in Britain. The Carthusian order was a silent order. Sadly it suffered at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries when the Chapel and other religious buildings were destroyed and used as building materials. It is the only Carthusian Monastery in the UK to have survived with intact internal features, including an internationally significant early fifteenth century wallpainting of Christ on the cross. Historic Coventry Trust are working to restore the building and open it to the public as a heritage visitor centre and educational attraction.

Part of the restoration includes replanting and harvesting the kitchen garden where we started work yesterday on the Grow with Us project. This will eventually supply the Cafe when the building is re-opened in September, working on a soil to plate ethos embeds the idea of ‘slow food’ into the sustainability of the site. There are seven raised beds, we designated four yesterday as a crop rotation, these will be Umbeliferae (carrots, parnsips, celery) and Allium (garlic, onion, shallot, chive, leek), Legumes (beans & peas), Brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale) and Cucurbits (squash & marrow). For variety and colour we will be planting different members of the same family into the beds. Taken as a whole this is the practice of monoculture and can be problematic since certain vegetables either drain or enhance the content of the soil, this is why each year they are rotated.

The remaining three raised beds will be organised as a polyculture, otherwise known as intercropping, it is the opposite of monoculture and means you plant several different types of vegetable into one bed. The intercropping for instance of maize, beans and squash is a method known as the ‘three sisters’. In this combination, the maize provides a structure for the bean to grow on, the bean provides nitrogen for all of the plants, while the squash suppresses weeds on the ground, it is more harmonious and follows natural eco-systems. Having cleared all the beds of left over vegetation and fertilized the other beds with the mulch we are ready for seed sowing which we will be doing next week.

For more information about the portfolio and the work of Historic Coventry Trust click this link Historic Coventry Trust.

Image and text reproduced from https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/packwood-house/features/the-charterhouse-project (accessed 05/03/22). Image reproduced from https://discover.hubpages.com/education/Agriculture-Methods (accessed 05/03/22)

A Land is Jacquetta Hawkes’ seminal work, and a classic piece of British Nature writing. It is the history of the shaping of Britain and its people from the first, lifeless, Pre-Cambrian rocks to the days of the ice-cream carton and the hydrogen bomb.

First, as an archaeologist and geologist, Hawkes paints a picture of the creation of Britain from the very first forming of the earth’s crust, through periods marked by lifeless worlds of rock, water and air, to the first emergence of life that senses its surroundings. The worms and trilobites mark the beginning of the story of life that evolves through the great reptiles, dinosaurs and finally humans. This is science writing at its very best. Engrossing stories, curious facts and powerful narrative combine under the umbrella of poetic writing and unadulterated passion for the subject.

Text reproduced from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Land-Collins-Nature-Library/dp/0007457464/ref=sr_1_1?crid=AD2T61GKSH4K&keywords=jacquetta+hawkes+a+land&qid=1646471800&sprefix=jacquett%2Caps%2C377&sr=8-1 (accessed 01/03/22)